Síria e Irão resistem a pressões

Syria has rejected an Arab League call for President Bashar al-Assad to hand over power to his deputy.

The league, meeting in Cairo, urged Syria to form a national unity government with the opposition within two months.

A government official called the plan "flagrant interference" in Syria's internal affairs, state TV said.

The UN says more than 5,000 people have died as a result of the crackdown on protests since they began last March.

The league called on both sides to end the bloodshed.

The government in Damascus says it is fighting "terrorists and armed gangs" and claims that some 2,000 members of the security forces have been killed.

Arab League split

"Syria rejects the decisions taken which are outside an Arab working plan, and considers them an attack on its national sovereignty and a flagrant interference in internal affairs," the unnamed Syrian official said.

I've spoken to protesters over the past few days who actually said they thought the monitors from the Arab League weren't all bad. They felt that the volume of violence from the government side reduced when the monitors were around.

The word used to me by one man was "deterrent" - they were a deterrent, because it meant that there were witnesses to what the government side was doing. In fact, you could see when journalists were there, people would come out and demonstrate.

But clearly what the presence of the monitors does not do is sort out the conflict here, which is getting pretty fundamental: a regime that won't go, against opponents that won't give up. And neither side can beat the other at present.

To expect the observers to sort that out themselves is really asking a bit too much. What is absent is a meaningful diplomatic or political process, enabling some kind of settlement to be made, and if that's not possible, then the rest of the outside world is bereft of ideas of what to do.

The official said the Arab League proposals were not in the interests of the Syrian people and would not prevent the country from "advancing its political reforms and bringing security and stability to its people".

Saudi Arabia said it was pulling out of the league's 165-strong monitoring mission in Syria because Damascus had broken promises on peace initiatives.

While the Arab League ministers said they were extending the controversial mission for another month, analysts say the Saudi decision has thrown its longer-term future into doubt.

Saudi Arabia is one of the key funders of the league's projects, but the monitors have been criticised for failing to stop the violence.

Speaking in Cairo on Monday, the head of the monitors, Sudanese General Mohammed al-Dabi, defended the mission.
BBC